THE NATURE OF A CONQUEST
by SHADO Commander
Summary: Every story has two sides... This is what happens AFTER the events of Graduation. You've seen some of the LOWARDIAN Perpective, now get a look into Kim's! A tale of Love, War, Epic Battles and KIMquest. My entry in Pinky Jo Curlytail's Fanfic Challenge for KP's Anniversary on June 7th!
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note *& Legal at bottom  
_

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**The Nature of a Conquest**

**By SHADO Commander**

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Lord Wrathblood looked over the latest reports again and shuddered. Strange. He'd thought his many years of training and constant battle had turned him into a creature with a heart as stony as the craggy continence of his scarred green face, but he now knew that not to be true. For even he, one of the mightiest of all the Tarn of Lowardia's greatest War Masters, had learned the meaning of the word fear.

And fear, as he had discovered, was pronounced "Human." Or perhaps "Earthling." Or "Terran." Or any of the hundreds of other words they had for themselves. What kind of insane species could occupy but a single world, yet have more languages than the three hundred and sixty three worlds the Great Galactic Federation Of Peace had used prior to their conquest by Lowardia? Now, of course, the former worlds of the Federation spoke only Lowardian… or had, until the Earthships had arrived.

And so he sat at his stone dais and contemplated the action he was about to undertake. No doubt future historians would look back at this day, this moment, and endlessly debate the course he had chosen. Perhaps he would be heralded. Perhaps he would be proclaimed the greatest fool in the history, even greater than the legendary Great Blue who had allowed himself to be speared in the back only moments after teaching the secret of weapons to the first Lowardian to rise out of the primordial ooze… but he had consulted with the Tarn himself and they had agreed that it was a path that must be followed if there was to be any future Lowardia for historians to argue over.

Less than two Karns ago, a minor and particularly unstable pair of Battle Lords had attacked a cursed yet deceptively peaceful looking orb of blue and green. A planet that circled a star so far down on the list of future conquests that the paperwork for assignment of a temporary pre-naming in Lowardian that would have prefaced the standard Declaration Of Acquisition announcement was still Karns from being filed. Not that the fact that that an official D.O.A. proclamation handn't been made should have made any difference. Young and ambitious Battle-Lords slipped off to conquer worlds all the time, and fleet quartermasters were all too happy to issue a Standardized – Invade – Crush – Kill package of world subjugation hardware to anyone who wanted to borrow it and was willing to grease their palms with a few Sagoth fangs. That sort of self-promotion was actively encouraged unofficially, though it irritated the older War Lords who didn't have the luxury of sneaking off with a well endowed Battle Maid for a little bit of recreational sex and violence. And by all rights, by any application of any kind of logic or logistics, this "Earth" should have fallen in less than three of that planet's standard planetary rotations.

Except, inexplicably, that hadn't happened. No one knew exactly what HAD happened, but what WAS known was that, for the first time in over a thousand Karns, a Lowardian Invasion fleet had not only failed to achieve the simple goal of the conquest of an indigenous species, it had been completely obliterated.

Indeed, the loaner invasion fleet had been destroyed so effectively that no one on Lowardia was even aware that a battle had been fought. So no follow up fleet of occupation and processing divisions had ever been launched, and because of the lack of the filing of the proper forms, which in this case had been particularly sketchy, no one had noticed that the supplementary Lowardeforming gear required to adapt all new worlds had never been requested. In fact, the only two things that might have ever given anyone a clue that something had gone wrong were the suspicions of a nervous quartermaster who'd proven to be rather exceptionally good at covering up certain "equipment shortages" in order to protect the skin that now served as a flag at the Great Tarn's fortress, and the fact that Worhok's personal pleasure tank had remained parked in a weekend only parking zone outside the Bureau of Interplanetary Conquest for so long that it had eventually becoming buried underneath a camouflaging blanket of traffic tickets once thehalf-karn payment he'd left in the bribe-meter ran out.

So, instead, exactly one Karn ago today, the first warning that the warriors of Lowardia had received of the unimaginable COUNTERATTACK had been when the impossible fleet of HUMAN ships had burst out of hyperspace and began dictating terms to the incredulous Regional Tarn of the Lowardian World of Aaaaaagh! (named, as per Lowardian tradition, after the first words spoken by the first native encountered by the conquest force.) Indeed, the Tarn of Aaaaaagh! had been completely unable to decide if he was in the presence of the stupidest race of creatures in the history of time, or the victim of a ridiculous prank being played by his jokester cousin, the Arch-Thok of the Lowardian World of Ouch! And because of that, he took the time to send a long, involved diatribe to his cousin about the poor taste of the joke, including a holographic transcript of the Earth Creature's messages, BEFORE opening fire on the pathetic Human ships.

Which had turned out to be a good thing, since, as far as intelligence experts at the Divisional Operational Office For Universal Surveillance & Skullduggery and the Bureau Of General Underhanded Sneakiness had been able to determine, no one had ever heard another single word from Aaaaaagh! again.

It was as if an entire world, three million Lowardians and who knew how many slave races had simply disappeared from the map of the universe. The exact same fate that befell every ship that had been sent there to investigate before the humans turned up again.

Which indeed they had; appearing shortly thereafter at the atmospheric border of the Outpost Worlds of Gurk! and This Is Boring (it had been uninhabited,) the Agricultural Planet of "Untranslatable Shriek," and then Ouch! itself, each time repeating their unacceptable demands for complete and total surrender, the immediate liberation of all sentient slave and food species and the rights to install refueling depots and some instruments of world domination called _"SmartyMarts"_ and _"Bueno Nachos"_ across the surface of the stellar bodies in question.

Each time they were quite rightly fired upon… and each time that was the last anyone in Unoccupied Lowardia ever heard from them.

Again, Wrathblood felt a shiver run up his plated spine. Unoccupied Lowardia. A Karn ago the concept that there could ever be an OCCUPIED Lowardia had been unthinkable. Now, if his analysts projections were correct, the humans might very well control more Lowardian space than Lowardia did. And the only reason the Earthers hadn't progressed even further had been the desperate plan of the Grand Order of Supreme Hardasses to meet the human ships in space whenever possible. And GOSH's plan HAD slowed the humans down.

Slightly. Just a little bit.

But only because of the Humans' tidy habit of always stopping to collect the opposing ships they'd left lying dead in space behind them, using the defeated battleships' own tractor beams to drag them behind the Earth battle cruisers like slave-thralls until leaving them at whichever planet they next conquered. Where, no doubt, they were being refitted to re-launch against other Lowardian worlds. Assuming they were even needed.

Unfortunately the latest numbers… the ones Wrathblood had just perused again… seemed to indicate that recycling of those ships wasn't likely to be necessary at all. In the last ten planetary rotations, four hundred and seventy eight more warships had been lost, taking with them the last twenty thousand Tripods, still secured in their launch bays and now destined to never be delivered to the besieged outpost worlds. IF there were any left. The last they'd heard, before the FTL communications nets had gone completely dead, was that Lowardia had already lost eight hundred PLANETS to the invaders. EIGHT HUNDRED!

And that was just what they knew of, for once a ship or world disappeared into the alien's expanding sphere, neither they nor the worlds beyond them were ever heard from again.

By the Testicles of Tartog! The mightiest star empire ever conceived, the greatest star nation the Universe had ever known, was being sliced apart as easily as one of those sweet snacky deserts his grandmother had made before she'd been declared redundant and sent to the processors to be tendered into protein. What kind of monsters had those fools Warmonga and Warhawk unleashed? And as if all that didn't seem unbelievable enough, if the limited intel that his people HAD been able to gather was even close to true, the humans had done it with only three ships.

Oh, they had a support fleet tagging behind them, but the three largest ships always moved in first. Exactly what they did… every single reports simply ended abruptly, it but obviously implied some kind of complete and instantaneous annihilation of all sentient life. A technology Lowardia had sought for years, yet never quite managed to attain.

It seemed seemed impossible… but then again, that WAS what HER name meant in her own variant of their language, wasn't it? Kim Possible.

Kim Possible The Destroyer. A hideous creature with the pale, wormlike pallor of a skrug, a huge mane of blood red hair and flat green eyes the color of zug-zug nut shells.

Kim Possible. The Commander of the Invasion Fleet.

But now… here and now, Lord Wrathblood swore… the Destroyer's reign of terror would end. And, by the Claw of Gothmer, he would be the one who ended it!

Because today marked the passage of one Karn exactly from the Human's first unbelievable appearance, and unlike most species system of time measurements, the Karn had nothing to do with planetary movements, seasonal cycles or the amount of time it took a whomprat to see its shadow on a cold winter morning.

No, the Lowardian Karn was a reminder. A commemoration. Of the longest single conflict that remained recorded in Lowardian history (which, to be fair, only went back about three thousand Karns, given the Lowardian propensity for blowing things up.) Indeed, it had been that war, between the Warclans of Gothmer and Splatz, that had defined the Lowardian way of life. Was there a Lowardian child who didn' t know of that great feud, which ended only when the last two male survivors… a two year old Gothmer and a Splatz said to be four (though Wrathblood had heard variations going as high as twelve) had faced off and the Great Gothmer had finally beaten the Splat's head in with his own toothing ring.

Surely, he had believed a child, no other battle could be so glorious. So epic. And yet, here he was, in a battle for the survival of all Lowardia and its traditions that made even that great bloodfeud dim in comparison.

For if this battle with the humans were to continue one rotation more, it would give lie forever to the most fundamental belief that beat in the twin hearts beneath the groin of every Lowardian child. That there WERE no greater warriors in all of Space, and that all that was Lowardia, from the brutal hazing in the nurseries to the staggering walk of the seniors to the protein tanks, was justified by the simple truth that might makes right. And if, somewhere out there in depths of space, it was proven that there were even greater warriors, like the mythical Great Blue, that conviction upon which all Lowardia turned would be so shattered as to destroy Lowardia completely.

And because of that... because this war had to end now... today, Wrathblood had resorted to a truly desperate strategy.

He had offered to make peace.

Oh, he had no intention of doing so, of course, but he'd rationalized that if he could get the commanders of the Destroyers' three main ships down here, onto the surface of Aiiiieeee!, he knew that he and his personal guards could overwhelm them… and while their system of command was disrupted, there was just enough time for last fleet reserves that he had hidden buried under a thin layer of ash on the other side of this world's moon, to destroy the three ships in the chaos and confusion. It was a plan built on cunning, deceit, and the assumption that the Humans would not simply use their annihilation weapon and destroy their own Destroyer, this Kim Possible, out of hand… in the process giving Wrathblood and his elite warriors now concealed behind the curtains, time to act. Had it been against any other foe, honor would never have allowed it.

But Wrathblood and the Thok of Aiiiieeee! had agreed. If the humans were to be stopped, they had to be stopped now, at any cost. For to go past a Karn, for another race to have battled Lowardians longer than the Lowardians had been able to battle each other… Then Lowardia would be forever broken no matter what followed.

So now he sat at his dais and waited. Honor be damned.

The Thok, against his will, had been evacuated to a secret underground bunker on one of the outer planets. If Wrathblood failed… well, best not to think about it but someone had to pick up the sword.

And then a geldpage… a Lowardian who had proven nimble of mind but weak of body and had therefore been removed from the gene pool… raced into the room with the words he had been awaiting.

"They're here!" the gelding yipped in a high pitched voice. "They actually came my Lord! They're approaching even now! All FOUR of them!"

"Four?" Wrathblood repeated in surprise. "Four?"

"That's right," an unfamiliar female voice interrupted. "We were having dinner when your invitation came, so Ron just had to bring the wife and kid-to-be along. If you've got an issue with it, you'll have to deal with Princess here."

Lord Wrathblood felt something very much like a rock plummet to the bottom of his stomach, and he found that raising his eyes from the geldpage to the figures standing in the doorframe was one of the hardest things he had ever done. For that simple act caused his gaze to meet that of the sinister green spheres glowing like death-suns in the demonic face of the Destroyer herself.

"So, what's the sitch?" Kim Possible yawned.

_TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART II! _

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_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**__ Yeah, yeah, that's an evil place to leave it, but it's just a two parter and the rest'll be up before June 7__th__, 2012, given that this is my official entry in __**Pinky Jo Curlytail's KP Anniversary Fanfic Challenge**__ commemorating the 10__th__ anniversary of the first airing of a certain demonic… I mean loveable redhead's first appearance on U.S. TV. Since I already did an actual show anniversary story last year ( see A KIMIVERSARY SPECIAL __.net/s/7017130/1/bA_b_bKimiversary_b_Special__ ) and the only restriction of this contest was that it had to written around an anniversary, ANY anniversary, I opted to go in a rather different direction this year and tackle a question I'd long been wondering.. As for why I'm putting it up in two parts? Partly because I have to wrap Chapter 60 of AT THE CENTERFOLD OF THE STORM, but also because not enough people read the KP forums and I want people to be aware of and participate in this challenge, darn it! __**It's the boinking* 10th Kimiversay people!**__ So, if I put the first part up this early, maybe it'll get someone else to contribute a story or two. Oh, and there's ALSO a deluxe no prize for the first person to identify the source of the title of this story in a review. (*Yes, boinking. One of the restrictions of the challenge is a T rating max, so you think I'm going to waste one of my precious allotment of T-allowed naughty words here?) Anyway, if you're STILL reading this, here are the as always highly anticipated __**LEGAL NOTES AND STUFF**__**:**__ Kim Possible, Shego, Ron Stoppable, Workhok, Warmonga, the Lowardians and all other characters borrowed from the wonderful KP Universe are the creations of Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, and those names are all trademarks of the Disney media organizations. All Lowardian planets, names and customs are my creation, but if anyone wants to build on them go ahead right ahead chicky monkey. What am I gonna do, sue? Oh, and on that note - This work is a work of parody and therefore protected by parody law, but just in case: I ain't getting a penny for this, and if you Disney folks would get on the ball and give us a BOINKING box set, you could make a lot more money than you'd ever get coming after people who love and worship KP as much as the whackos here do._


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note & Legal at bottom  
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**The Nature of a Conquest**

**Part II**

**By SHADO Commander**

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Wrathblood felt his jaw gaping at the four alien creatures that had somehow, impossibly, entered the chamber without his awareness...

And, most specifically, he gaped at the ridiculous TINY creature that had placed itself directly before him.

THIS was the destroyer? This miniscule thing that barely came up to his thigh? Whose HEAD was small enough to crush in one hand? It was absurd! Preposterous! He could snap THIS over his knee with a strong breath… and even the single male in the group was a veritable midget!

THIS was what they'd been afraid of?

And yet, the tiny, obscenely pink female seemed completely unaware of his physical superiority, standing there in front of him in a form-fitting suit that hugged the un-muscled contours of her scrawny body in a way that made it obvious that it concealed no hidden weapons, tapping its ludicrously miniscule foot in what was obviously some sign of irritation.

He barely even heard the next words it uttered, something the universal translator in his ear was having trouble determining meant either stitch or itch, because it's annoying little chirp was drowned out by the concealed earpiece in his ear by which his hidden technicians quickly confirmed that these… these HUMANS, had indeed, foolishly, brought no weapons of any kind!

And with that, any last minute trepidations were swept aside by the certainty that filled Wrathblood's surging green heart. Surely this was the time to strike, and as a War Master of Lowardia his strike must quickly, decisively and true.

"For Lowardia!" He commanded his waiting minions. "Destroy!"

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"_Oh, here we go again,"_ Kim thought to herself, still shaking off the yawn as her body leapt into motions that were now so instinctual that she could probably fend off a Lowardian assault in her sleep. Even as she dedicated one portion of her brain to counting off the other probable threats in the room, her "tiny" little arms were wrapping around Wrathblood's massive forelimbs and, to the War Master's shock, using his own inertia to accelerate his huge body over her head and into the stone base of what had been a rather fetching statue of a naked Lowardian female. Wrathblood's flying forehead snapped it off that the ankles with a disturbingly loud crack and then the nude disintegrated into rubble as both it, and Wrathblood's stunned face slammed through what had been a surprisingly solid wall beyond.

It was amazing, Kim reflected, what a huge difference just a little bit of experience could make when it came to fighting the giant green alien menaces hand to hand, and given that this was, by her count, the 387th time that she'd been invited to one of these meetings - slash -ambushes, experience was something she'd had plenty of. Frankly, she was beginning to wonder if the Lowardians were ever going to come up with something more cunning than the ubiquitous thinly disguised trap followed by the inevitable challenge to mortal combat and… well, maybe they did have varying plans as to what to do with her body after that. But was there really that much difference between being mounted over a fireplace, bronzed and used as a doorstop or fed to the Hronk Hounds?

In any case, while the possibility remained that a Lowardian might eventually surprise her, this obviously wasn't going to be that occasion.

Taking advantage of the brief period in which Wrathblood extricated his head from the hole in the wall and the remains of the statue, she made a quick rescan of the room to confirm her initial analysis that there were at least seven warriors hiding behind those drapes, with at least that many more outside that door… so, maybe a total of fifteen, including the hardly down for the count Wrathboood.

So not the drama. Even if the Lowardian's had abandoned their usual concept of 'honorable' fighting to take the Earthlings on in groups instead of the traditional one on one, that was nowhere near enough to give her four person landing party much difficulty.

"Shego, take the curtains! Ron, the door! Yori..." Her words were cut off as the elfin kunoichi completely ignored Kim's previous instructions to NOT get involved in the fight and somersaulted across the room to kick the first Lowardian through the door in the face with the pointed heels she'd chosen to wear on her jet black skinsuit over the usual flats. Ouch. That one would be out of action for a few minutes… a good thing given that the Lowardians' concept of an "honorable fight" DID include the use of weapons against unarmed men and women, even one who happened to be four months pregnant.

"Ron…" Kim yelled, but the blonde man in the black and blue skinsuit had already placed himself between Yori and the NINE gigantic warriors coming in the door with raised swords, and the Japanese girl knew better than to get between Ron and anyone when the mystical monkey mojo was rising. Fine, Kim was NEVER going to hear the end of it if she didn't let the ninja at least guard Ron's back.

Meanwhile, Shego literally her hands full with the group that had leapt out from behind the drapes, all of whom were now discovering in the worst possible way what made the plasma-wielding woman the terror of all male Lowardians.

Full body ablaze at a temperature that would have left her old catsuit in ashes and her serpentine form fighting in the nude (a fate that had actually befallen her several times before the Tweebs had finally discovered the right materials for her all new but familiarly colored green and black skinsuit,) she was now simply too hot a tamale to handle for the overmatched Lowardians. An all-together pile-on might have been enough to take the dragon woman down for a few seconds, but would have come at the expense of considerable skin and irreplaceable flesh, so instead the attackers were force to attempt to hit her boots, gauntlets or the occasional edged weapon even as the laughing emerald dervish was making repeated, sizzling impacts on their relatively unprotected crotches.

Kim winced in sympathy at the howls of pain and the stench that was rather like burning sweat socks. Having briefly occupied Ron's body, Kim had a better than basic average girl's appreciation of what Shego's unorthodox new fighting technique must actually feel like for the unfortunate victims. She couldn't fault the results, however, and once the pale woman had discovered that Lowardian privates were no less immune to pain than their Terran equivalent, the human toaster had quickly fine-tuned her sizzling surprise move, which she alternately referred to as "smoking the old kielbasa" or "the greenie-weenie-roast," with considerable relish. Of course, once she'd winnowed her pack down to just two or three opponents, Shego would probably switch back to her old-school kung fu, but for now the object was to defeat this group as quickly and decisively as possible.

Speaking of which, Kim remembered as she wheeled back to the rising form of Wrathblood as he staggered to his feet, she still had her own designated opponent to deal with.

The information they'd taken from captured Lowardian systems on Wrathblood had been initially rather impressive… half again the size of Warhok, he was considered to be one of the ten best hand to hand fighters in the Lowardian Empire, which was saying quite a bit, and he was equally proficient in most forms of weaponry. On the other hand, a further review of his previous battles had shown that he had all the strategic imagination of a bull in a china shop and had no doubt considered his little attempt at an ambush to be a masterwork of artifice and cunning.

And, as expected, he came at her in an arms over the head like King Kong in a Kaiju movie bulrush that she again took complete advantage of, dodging in under his first hasty grab and slamming his kneecap sideways in a way her mother's scientists at the Alien Brain Biosciences & Anatomy center (ABBA) had estimated gave a 55% chance of dislocation. Kim wasn't quite that lucky on this first shot, and unlike Shego she hadn't quite gotten over the disinclination to take him down for the count with a quick cheap strike to the junk, but it did throw Wrathblood off long enough for her to hit the nerve center under his left armpit that was her real target. THAT had a 95% chance of reducing the motor ability of that limb by better than 50% and she was pleased to hear Wrathblood howl in shock and anger as the little mosquito of a woman stung him for a third time. (Okay, the Lowardian equivalent of a mosquito was a GrikGiri, but there was no way Kim was going to compare herself to one of those nightmarish flying octopus type things.)

The grand irony, of course, was that the War Master was now suffering from the exact same disadvantage that Kim herself had faced the first time she fought a Lowardian.

In retrospect it seemed so obvious, she mused as she finished her pass with yet another punch in lower chest where the alien's equivalent of kidneys were. The martial arts that she and Shego had spent their lives mastering were designed around human opponents, with human weaknesses, and it was often not so much how hard you hit, but where you hit and how that made a strike effective.

When taking on a non-human foe for the first time, however, both Kim and Shego had been hitting in the wrong places… they'd done some damage, yes, but without knowing where the chinks were in the natural armor created by doubly thick skeletons and musculature of the Lowardians, it had been rather like trying to stop a car by punching it in the engine block. On the other hand, their Lowardian opponents' basic fighting style had lacked any such finesse, having been built around the simple principle of using their overwhelming strength to smash and crush opponents who tended to be a lot more… squishy... than they were. Advantage: Lowardians.

However, once the humans had begun to build a comprehensive database on Lowardian anatomy, it hadn't taken long for Kim and Shego to work out the modifications necessary to adapt their existing techniques to the new targets. With a little practice and lots of exercise to keep from losing muscle tone in the lowered artificial gravity of the vanguard fleet's ships, kicking Lowardian butt had turned out to be simply a matter of knowing the right moves. Especially when Kim's policy of maintaining complete FTL communications blackouts on each of the captured planets guaranteed that the humans new moves and tactics would always come as a complete surprise to their next unfortunate alien opponents.

Of course, as the shrill scream of a Lowardian being knocked through a wall behind her evidenced, Ron hadn't needed to learn any of the new maneuvers, though he'd dutifully studied each one as Kim and Shego refined them. It seemed that his monkey martial skills, wherever they came from and however they worked, truly did have an edge of mystical about them, as he/they had instinctively realized the need to correct for alien anatomy and had somehow come up with the correct counters for Warhok and Warmonga all on their own. Unfortunately, once those powers have been unleashed they'd also proved to be incredibly erratic and difficult to control… until Yori had thankfully shown up a few weeks after Graduation with the assignment of re-teaching Ron some of the finer control techniques he'd learned at Yamanouchi only to forget after the test in classic Ron fashion.

Still, perhaps that wasn't so surprising, Kim reflected as she delivered another kick to Wrathblood's other kneecap and then followed up with an elbow jab into a nerve center of the fuming War Master's left leg that sent him teetering sideways, given all the OTHER things about Ron's first trip to Yamanouchi that he'd "forgotten "about, been made to forget about or had simply opted not to reveal. It had taken her "Kimness" a while to accept the fact that her BFF really had found a slightly different path from her own, but she'd finally acknowledged that it really wasn't her business. Especially not now.

Okay… it looked like Wrathblood was finally about to give up on attempting to catch her so, going limp to absorb the impact, Kim deliberately let him finally land a good one on her… with his left arm. He still hadn't realized the full extent of reduction in power Kim's armpit score had done, and from the way she rolled backwards in what looked like an uncontrolled tumble, he wasn't going to figure it out just yet. Not until he'd stepped into the jaws of the trap she was laying.

Shego hadn't been making up a story about the three commanders having dinner together, although the actual meal had been four hours ago, and both she and Yori had been on the point of nodding off while they waited for Ron and Shego to finally tire of their never-ending attempts to one up the other at Bricks of Fury 23. Kim because she'd overindulged on the huge dinner that Ron had prepared on the second anniversary of their marriage… Ron and Yori's, that is. And Yori because, well, being four months pregnant with the first of an unbelievable new generation of Stoppables, she'd learned to take the concept of eating for two to heart and had actually matched the legendary Ron and Shego appetites bite for bite.

But then the call had come in challenging… er, "inviting" the commanders of Terran Task Fleet One to a "initiate peace talks," and Kim hadn't had any option but to pull herself out of near slumber and into command mode to lead her fellow fleet commanders down to yet another planet's surface… where, yet again, it proved to be a universal constant that no one EVER thought to guard their stupid air vents. Granted, in this case it probably was because the average Lowardian couldn't possibly fit in one of their own air ducts anyway, and the green behemoths' habit of not counting any other sapient species had proved accurate for nearly a thousand years. Now, however, the Green Lords of the Cosmos had made the mistake of picking a fight with a species that might be even more fractious and violent than they were.

Now Wrathblood was almost on her. Making it look good, Kim faked a quick strike that he easily deflected, and let a look of feigned shock cross her face as she left herself totally open, goading him to come in for the kill.

Exactly whose kill it was going to be, on the other hand…

Kim felt the world around her go into slow motion, as she entered the state of ultra-adrenaline rush that, prior to the Lowardians, she'd only been able to trigger while fighting with Shego and Monkey Fist. Taking down Wrathblood by herself, with no cheats, tricks or assistance was critical to the success of this mission… but she couldn't make it look too easy.

As Kim's initial studies of Lowardian history had indicated, and as all of their actual contact thus far had seemed to confirm, defeating each individual planet's champions in something that approximated their own battles for dominance within their society meant a much less messy clean-up operation afterwards. By meeting and beating the Lowardians on their own terms… indeed often adhering more closely to the Traditional Rules of Battle than the Lowardians themselves… the humans staked a far more legitimate (from the Lowardian point of view) claim to the rights of conquerors that Lowardian law automatically granted the War Masters and their troops over members of other subservient races.

Which was, Kim smirked, why her team let themselves be "lured" in, time after time when Kim's fleet could, in fact, have simply taken out each planet out in passing, without even bothering to respond to a single radio hail.

Not that doing something like that was something Kim herself could really imagine herself doing. For one thing, it would look bad in the history books. But more importantly, she was still very much the kind of girl who liked to wade into a situation and get her hands and feet dirty. Which partially explained why, just ten years after the Lowardians had made first contact with humankind, she was here on one of their worlds, rather than back on the home planet helping her father, brothers, Wade and Dr. Lipsky spearhead the massive technological revolution that had rebuilt Earth and moved mankind out into the stars.

That and the fact that her own personal code of ethics demanded that she had to be here, in person, when they unleashed the final phase of the operation. Like the tall pale woman now down to two opponents to her right, and the handsome blonde man polishing off his last opponent to her left, she had been there at the very start of all this. Not just the war, but also its unexpected solution. And given how drastic and earthshaking…er, Aiiiieeee!-shaking, the course of action that they were about to undertake would be for the residents of this world, she wasn't about to wimp out on her own responsibility by letting someone else take the hit.

Wrathblood's arms came in exactly as anticipated. When in doubt, crush-kill-destroy was the universal Lowardian fallback plan, and no doubt the massive warrior's huge arms, each thicker than Kim's widest portion) WOULD have crushed Kimberly Anne Possible between his fingers like a sugar cookie if he'd been able to actually touch her.

But he hadn't, because it had just been a feint. Instead of a redhead in his arms, the giant green man got a double concussive hit on his temples, followed by a devastating kick to… not his concrete like jaw or elephant sized skull.. but the soft tissue of his throat, exactly where the muscles that controlled his breathing were.

Lowardian anatomy lesson number 2: although a passive Lowardian could hold his breath for up to eight minutes, a fighting Lowardian needed a LOT of oxygen. Take that precious gas away from him and he would got down like a sack of cement in exactly the same way that Lord Wrathblood proceeded to demonstrate.

With a sudden grunt of shock, the green giant's eyes rolled over and glazed as his consciousness wavered… and then the lack of air took him down.

Bam.

"Anyone need a hand?" Kim asked even before Wrathblood hit the floor.

"No, please and thank you," Shego grinned, dropping her last opponent almost simultaneously with Kim's.

"We're cool," Ron added, punching one of two warrior across the room, then watching Yori deliver the coup de grace to the last woozy Lowardian standing. "So not the drama."

"Boo-yah," added Yori with a wink.

"Then it's time to get to the dirty part of this job," Kim sighed.

**##################################D**

The female voice was soft and soothing as it echoed in the darkness. "Data entry number 5937, Planet Aieeee! Subject: War Master Wrathblood, Post Engagement Interview."

And then Wrathblood sputtered into wakefulness to find his legs shackled and his arms restrained behind his back… something that he had never experienced in all his years as a soldier. And to add insult to injury, it was his own dais he was chained to. Surrounded by the equally bound and unconscious bodies of his own warriors. All of whom lay before the demonic form of Kim Possible and her three minions as the Destroyer looked up from speaking into the small recording device in her hands.

"Ah good," she smiled. "Let it be noted that the subject, the senior planetary authority under the terms of Lowardian Martial Law, is the now awake and aware." A concerned look. "Er… You ARE aware, aren't you? No ringing in your ears or other signs of concussion? I hit you kind of hard…"

The only thing that kept Wrathblood from dying from pure mortification on the spot was the equally boundless rage that boiled up inside him.

"RELEASE ME!" he screamed, stressing his bonds with every patang of strength in his body as he raged at the alien monster standing in front of him. The she-beast that had just defeated he and a squad of his greatest fighters. "RELEASE ME OR DIE!"

"I'll take that as a 'no, I'm feeling fine," The redheaded monster sighed, then looked at him quizzically. "But you do realize how illogical that is, don't you? Why would anyone want to let someone who's threatening to kill them go free?"

"I…" Wrathblood began, and then realized Possible was right. It WAS a rather illogical request. Not that logic seemed to have been part of much that had happened since he'd first encountered the humans. Rather than admit that, however, he settled instead on a volcanic glower that would have made steel melt. Unfortunately Possible seemed to be made of something a bit more indestructible, as she simply kept talking.

"Oh, and I suppose I should tell you now that while you were out, we neutralized the fleet you had hidden on the moon," the fire-haired creature continued conversationally. "We've had a couple of stealthed drones out at the edge of your solar system for months monitoring all your movements, so we already knew where they'd be dug in…"

Possible paused a moment for that to sink in, then followed quickly with: "In the craters that you call the Scar of Gorbarsh, the Bruise Of Melkoth and the… er… Anus of the Tartog, by the way, just in case you might think I'm bluffing."

Despair hit Wrathblood in a wave. He had failed. With the loss of that fleet, the way to Lowardia itself was practically unguarded. Were there any future history to be written, his name would be synonymous with ultimate failure.

"Then kill me and be done with it." He growled, determined to at least meet his end like a proper Lowardian.

Possible arched one eyebrow in amusement. "No, I think I'd rather release you."

"What?" Wrathblood stammered. Was this creature intentionally trying to confuse him?

"I said I'd rather let you go," the she-demon repeated. "There are several million sentient beings on this planet, and while I'm not particularly crazy about the politics or organizational structure of your existing form of government, it's better than nothing while we get things turned around, the slave species emancipated and work towards free elections."

Wrathblood stared at her in disbelief. "ELECTIONS?"

"Yeah," the green demon, who'd been silent until now, pitched in. "You'll probably hate them as much as we do, but in the end, they beat any alternatives."

"Right," Possible agreed. "And the funny thing is, you're the kind who'll probably end up running for some kind of office. But, in the meantime, we need to keep this planet operating smoothly. We need the transportation systems to run, the food to be grown and shipped, and we'll need a LOT of new housing and construction built. And the easiest way to do that is if you agree to work for us."

"Work… for you..?" Wrathblood repeated dully. Clearly these creatures WERE insane.

"Sure," Possible nodded. "As the highest ranking military official on this planet during a period of martial law, that makes you the senior-most member of your government as well. We DO know how your distribution of power works, just as we know that, since I defeated you in one on one, man to woman combat, you're now technically my thrall."

Wrathblood's jaw was hanging on the floor once again. "Surely… surely you're joking?"

"Nope, I'm deadly serious. And my name is Kimberly, not Shirley." Kim looked at Wrathblood's increasingly puzzed look and sighed. "That last part was a joke. It guess it doesn't translate."

"But don't worry," she continued. "I'm not going to make you a slave or anything like that… and yes, we HAVE researched Lowardian law quite thoroughly and I know what I COULD demand of you. Just as how I know that if you, as the senior commander, orders something… then every Lowardian of lesser rank on the planet is required to follow those orders."

"For as long as it takes for one of them to challenge me," Wrathblood spit. "Do you really think any Lowardian Warrior worth his father's hairbandswould obey me if I was to become your puppet?"

"Doesn't matter," Possible shrugged. "I just need your official surrender on the documents Shego is holding. Thumbprint it and agree that your people will abide by the terms of the Armistice agreement for a minimum of one Terran year… that's about two hundred and eighty days in Aieeee! Time… and once we've at the end of that period we'll sit down and draft out a more permanent agreement."

"Two hundred and eighty days?" Wrathblood repeated, starting to feel rather like an echo. And yet… deep inside his tiny green mind, a cunning plot was beginning to grow. That amount of time would certainly be enough time to study the humans, find their weak spots and organize a counter attack… yes, it would be shameful to be the one to actually accept these terms, but that shame would be worth it if he could find a way to use the Human's strange ideas against them.

"Two hundred and eighty of your days," Possible repeated. "One Terran year. Do we have a deal?"

"I…" Wrathblood began, hardly believing he was hearing his own voice saying these words. "Yes. As War Master of Aieeee!, I accept your terms of.. Armistice."

"Spanking," Kim smiled as Wrathblood bit his green index finger and marked the papers with the traditional bloody print. "And now that we've got that recorded, I should admit that you probably should have read the document first, but we DO try to be fair about this."

A strange crooked smile creased the Destroyer's lips. "On the other hand, we DO know Lowardians pretty well at this point, so you'll have to forgive us if we take a few steps to make sure there aren't any unpleasant incidents during the Armistice period. And believe me, I don't like this part any more than you would now… but in two hundred and eighty days, I think you'll see things a bit differently."

"'Nique," Kim spoke into her hyper-Kimmunicator. "The Terms of the Armistice have been formally accepted. As Provisional Planetary Governor, I hereby order the pacification of this planet's entire population."

"Peace-bomb us," Kim Possible commanded.

And, as one, the three giant ships now circling the planet in a giant equidistant triangle designed to cover every single centimeter of the planet, let fly and saturated the entire planet in a massive bombardment… of the rays of the largest attitudinators ever built.

##########################################D

"Bombardment completed, Kamander," the familiar blue face of Electra Nicodemus, who in another lifetime had been known as Electronique, spoke from the holoscreen on Kim's Hyper-Kimmunicator. "Neural engines disenkgaged und in stasis."

"Thank you 'Nique," Kim nodded as she wearily plodded back to the stealthed shuttle. "Commanders Barkin and Du, you may bring Away Teams Two and Three down to the surface to commence Operation Blacksmith and relieve the Commmanders Stoppable."

"Ma'am!" came the snappy response of Vanguard Fleet's most effective occupation team (and the winners of the Fleet Shuffleboard Championship, three years ruinning.) They'd be staying behind for several weeks to make sure the newly deputized Native Contingent were actually following through with the plan that had been suggested… never ordered… to their overly-goodly polarized minds. After all, now that everyone was peaceful and happy, it just made so much sense to pound all those ridiculous weapons into plowshares.

Kim shuddered.

"Still creeps you out, huh?" Shego spoke softly beside her.

"Yeah," Kim nodded. "Even though we know it's not permanent now, and even though it's for the best, I still remember what it was like when I was controlled like that."

"But 'Nique's Polarity Reverser is different," Shego pointed out as they entered the Shuttle and the green woman began cycling the airlock. "You might do things that you normally wouldn't do, but they're not things that you don't WANT to do."

"I know. Been there, done that, remember?" Kim countered with a soft smile, remembering.

It had been shortly after Ron had destroyed the Lowardian Ship that had attacked the Earth that she'd had her first crisis of faith. Worhok and Warmonga were running amuck… contrary to everyone's original belief and much to Ron's eternal relief, they hadn't actually been killed when he'd unleashed his monkey mojo on them. They HAD been blown all the way to Upperton, however, where they'd laid low until the opportunity to repossess some of their old equipment had presented itself. The rematch against the now four-person Team Possible had been far less spectacular than their original match-up, but it had ended in the problem of exactly where to keep the two nearly indestructible invaders.

Once everyplace that Shego had already proven could be escaped from was taken off the list… which was everyplace… the subject of mental restraints had been brought up as a last resort. Kim had fought against it, but Shego, of all people, had steered everyone towards Electronique and her Polarity Reverser as an alternative to mind control chips.

And that's when they'd made an amazing discovery. Electronique's own self-inflicted dose of brain-bedazzler had actually worn off all on it's own, and under iinterrogation, Jack Hench finally admitted that the only reason he hadn't attempted to use his company's Attitudinators to take over the world himself was that the maximum effective period was a mere six months. After that, they just didn't work on the same person anymore, and their personality would return to normal even if they swallowed an activated unit.

Except…

Except that something about having your brain's polarity flashed all the way to one side and back.. either way… was that it was kind of like an enema for one's mental backlog, and while you were pretty much the same person you'd been before being zapped, a lot of the little hang-ups and issues that you'd built up over the years would have suddenly have been flushed away. Electronique had come out of the experience... well, the only way to describe her now was amazingly chill. And as for Shego...

"When I stopped being Ms. GO, I wasn't the same old Shego I'd been," The green woman confirmed. "So many things that had never quite matched up properly in my head suddenly meshed perfectly. I knew why I'd always been so angry, but now I understood how the path I'd taken was really never going to get me where I wanted to go. And it was getting harder and harder to work up a genuine mad-on so I could get properly psyched up to beat the crap out of a certain stupid cheerleader."

"As if," the not so stupid cheerleader giggled, finishing the flight solution and igniting the shuttle's thrusters.

"Don't tempt me Possible," Shego returned with a snort, shrugging off the sudden additional g-forces with the practice of a veteran spacer. "You may be faster and have your little happy flip-flips, but I'm still stronger. It's just that once that I'd realized that I…"

"Liked me."

"Didn't DESPISE you," the ex-villain grumbled, "I knew my villain days were numbered. Hell, I should have realized that the first time I had to save your sorry butt from Warmonga, even before I got the brain blow-dry and rinse."

"Uh huh," Kim grinned. "So are we going to your ship first or mine?"

"That depends. Are we going to hit the dojo or catch the latest vids Wade's forwarded?"

"Dojo," Kim decided, punching the course from her flagship to Shego's command. "Everytime I watch Joss and my brothers take down some new villain, I just get homesick. Besides, I think someone needs to be reminded who always beats who, two falls out of three."

"That's just because I don't want to break you!"

"'Cause you like me."

"Auuugh!" The green face contorted. "Okay Princess, you're asking for it. I'm not holding back, this time!"

"Sure you're not." Kim stuck her tongue at the woman who had strangely become her best friend… even if the pale woman still had trouble using those exact words. Kim really didn't care, because she'd insisted that she get a full personal dose of the Polarity Reverser before she'd even consider administering it to others, and she'd learned a few things about herself in the process. Things that she suspected Shego suspected as well, just as she suspected that Shego suspected her of harboring similar suspicions.

After all, wasn't it just a wee bit slightly telling that while Kim had chosen to name her ship Peace and Ron had named his Harmony, Shego had bucked the trend ever so slightly and named hers The Love Boat 2?

Could be. After all, anything was Possible for a Possible. But first… they had a galaxy they needed to finish conquering… And that was probably going to take a few months more, at least.

"Aw man, you've got that look on your face again," Shego groaned.

"What look?" Kim smiled innocently.

"The look that always says you're thinking about something that I probably don't want to know about, but that I'm going to find out about when you decide it's time for me to find out about it."

"Maybe…" Kim admitted. "So do you want me to just drop you off, then?"

"Hell no. When you get like that, things get interesting; and I like it when things get interesting."

"That's awfully close to saying that you like ME, you know?"

"grmb rgmb grrmrrr…"

"What was that?"

"I said MAYBE! Okay? Are you happy?"

"Delighted," Kim giggled, resisting the urge to kiss her frustrated former foe on the nose.

One more small step for a Kim, one giant leap for… whatever this was. And who knew where that would lead?

_But THAT would be another story…_

##########################################D

_**Author's Note: **_Ack! I forgot to upload this until the last minute, so this draft is going up just to make the time for PJC's contest. Sorry if there were any rough spots and I'll try to get them all cleaned out in the next day or so. _**LEGAL NOTES AND STUFF**__**:**__ Kim Possible, Shego, Ron Stoppable, Workhok, Warmonga, the Lowardians and all other characters borrowed from the wonderful KP Universe are the creations of Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, and those names are all trademarks of the Disney media organizations. All Lowardian planets, names and customs are my creation, but if anyone wants to build on them go ahead right ahead chicky monkey. What am I gonna do, sue? Oh, and on that note - This work is a work of parody and therefore protected by parody law, but just in case: I ain't getting a penny for this, and if you Disney folks would get on the ball and give us a BOINKING box set, you could make a lot more money than you'd ever get coming after people who love and worship KP as much as the whackos here do._


End file.
